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Pineapple Bon-Bon
A Southern Dainty.
Fill a phosphate or sherbet glass nearly full of finely shaved ice, add a ladleful of American Crushed Pineapple from bowl on counter. Place a spoonful of ice cream on top, and serve with a sherbet spoon. Can also be made with any other flavor American Crushed Fruit.
A fountain assembly rather than a cooked dish, so the only real variables are the ice, the fruit syrup and the glass. Everything depends on the ice being shaved rather than cracked.
- Shaved ice, not crushedFountain shaved ice was fine and snowy, closer to the texture of a snow cone than to bar ice. A blender or ice shaver gets you there; coarse cracked ice makes the fruit syrup run straight to the bottom and leaves you drinking it.
- "American Crushed Pineapple"This reads as a trade-name product rather than a generic instruction: a sweetened crushed fruit put up for fountain use. Canned crushed pineapple in juice will taste thin by comparison, so drain it and fold in simple syrup, or use a good pineapple preserve loosened with a little of its own liquid.
- The ladlefulFountain fruit ladles ran roughly 1 to 1.5 fluid ounces, which is 2 to 3 tablespoons. Enough to saturate the ice without flooding the glass.
- Phosphate or sherbet glassBoth are small glasses of roughly 6 to 8 ounces, the sherbet glass footed. There is no acid phosphate in this drink despite the name; the glass is simply the vessel the soda clerk had at hand.
- The ice creamThe recipe calls only for a spoonful, sitting on top rather than stirred in, and does not specify a flavour. The point of the dish is the contrast between cold granular ice, syrupy fruit and cream, so serve it the moment it is built.
- Sherbet spoonA spoon with a shallow, slightly pointed bowl. Any iced-tea or parfait spoon does the job; a short spoon will not reach the bottom of the glass.
- YieldOne glass, one person. Multiply as needed; there is nothing to hold or make ahead.
Soda fountain manuals of the early twentieth century were as much sales literature as cookbooks, and this entry shows it: the crushed fruit is named as a specific commercial product, kept in a bowl on the counter within the clerk's reach, and the recipe closes by reminding him that the same formula sells under any other flavor in the line. Canned and jarred crushed fruits let a drugstore fountain offer pineapple, strawberry or cherry year-round, which fresh fruit could not do. The label "A Southern Dainty" is marketing rather than geography, though shaved-ice confections did have a long following in the hot South, and the whole construction is a first cousin to the fruit-syruped snowballs still sold there. "Bon-bon" here simply signals something small, sweet and pretty enough to justify the price.